Simulated Gameday Experience

(Update: more writing on this can be found here.)

From the annals of the truly bizarre comes Mike Leach’s termination, effective immediately.  Leach is a bit of a character in his own right; as I’m writing this I’m half-staring at a pirate flag across the street, which is doing nothing but reminding me of Leach and his fascination with pirates.  That, along with a prolific passing offense and tendency to act a bit bizarre at times (sometimes that qualifies as understatement), is why we’ve heard of Leach.

That, not coincidentally, is why he ended up getting canned.  On some level, this came down to a he-said he-said argument; Adam James (and, by extension, Craig James, and, by extension, his employer ESPN, albeit acting as a platform only and not with any sort of agenda – would’ve made it a wee bit awkward had James gone through with broadcasting the Alamo Bowl, which TTU is a part of) assert that Leach treated him unfairly while he was injured.  Leach, of course, denies this, although he does assert that he did take disciplinary action.  I’m not going to get into all the details here.  What’s important right now are two factors:

-          Mike Leach is now available as a coach, at least in theory

-          Texas Tech brass, Leach, and possibly the James family are about to get embroiled in one heck of a legal mess

Of the two, the latter is the most compelling by far and the most important for the short to medium-term.  The key here is that Leach was fired with cause; so far, the only thing we have substantiating that cause is the player and his family.  On the other hand, we have numerous accounts operating against Adam James (most notably those seen here, as former players and staff apparently decided to flood CBS).  Some of these are things you’d expect from former players, as players do typically form a bond with coaches – the one notable exception being everyone turning on Mark Mangino a few weeks ago.  (Anyone remember the Jim Leavitt “he hit a player” conundrum from a few weeks ago?  That’s probably because everyone came to Leavitt’s side, resulting in the player dropping the complaint; the true oddity there was the player’s father flip-flopping six times in three days.)  Regardless, cause here is dependent on the word of one player, at least in the immediate sense.

TTU and Leach have been at loggerheads before; among other things, the negotiations for Leach’s contract extension last offseason were incredibly heated, with both sides threatening to break it off at least once during the process.  The impression – whether fairly created or no – was that TTU brass were merely tolerating Leach for whatever reason: personality issues, results (I imagine it wasn’t that, since Leach was the most successful coach they’ve had), treatment, or maybe he just didn’t shower enough.  Nobody really thought about that once the season began, and even the whole “fat little girlfriend” incident post-TAMU loss was just chalked up to Leach being Leach.

The James family might get roped into this if Leach is feeling particularly petulant, possibly in some kind of character defamation lawsuit.  I don’t know enough to know if Leach will pursue that route, but since the family provided the tipping point, it’s always a possibility.  Either way, there’s going to be at least one lawsuit floating around, likely contingent on the $400K he was due per season (4 years left on the contract, so a total of $1.6 million) for being fired without cause; you can figure out which side Leach is going to be on.  Legality issues are better defined by Smart Football so I’ll defer to him on that end.  The upshot is that I’m tentatively siding with Leach on this one; the guy is a bit of a loose cannon (pirate joke!) but there’s a fine line between loose cannon and firing with cause.  The only damage he’s inflicted has been of the low-level psychological nature, and even that is debatable to some extent.  If TTU’s case is contingent on Adam James’ psyche, I think they’re going to be in trouble.

As for Leach, he’ll land on his feet.  He’s too good a coach to not be employed for very long (although I do imagine potential suitors will be scared off a bit by the whole filing-suit-against-your-employer thing), and if he’s radioactive for a year or two I’m sure he can find TV work somewhere.  Don’t worry about him.

Tags: coaching by dr. nick riviera, ding dong the witch is dead, pirates, this makes less than no sense